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The Many Connections of Mary Miller Green Delige (c1849-1932), Part 1

Philip Ruth, Research Coordinator

March 1, 2025

Note from Co-Director Julia Spicher Kasdorf: In this post, we leave Bellefonte and glimpse traces of an African American settlement in rural Centre County, dating from the early 1800s and giving the name to what is still referred to as “Tow Hill” near the modern day Way Fruit Farm. By digging into the genealogy of Mary Miller Green Delige—and demonstrating his research process and decisions—Philip Ruth uncovers the old community near Stormstown in Halfmoon Valley, tracks connections between some of the most important, original Black families of nineteenth-century Centre County, and suggests a possible origin story for the first Black settlers on Tow Hill.

 

I encountered Mary Miller Green Delige while researching the obscure Tow Hill settlement south of Stormstown in Centre County’s Halfmoon Township, alleged by a few area historians to have been established and occupied by African American families as early as the 1820s. Mary’s name struck me because it incorporates surnames of some of the County’s largest and most enduring Black families of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Numerous African Americans named “Miller” and “Delige” were recorded in Halfmoon Township in the 1850 and 1860 federal census enumerations, and plenty of Greens and Deliges appeared in Bellefonte-area newspaper articles, civic directories, and census schedules after the Civil War. (A Delige descendant helpfully informed me that the surname was pronounced “deh-LEEDGE,” with the latter syllable emphasized and rhyming with “siege.”) It occurred to me that researching a Centre Countian named “Mary Miller Green Delige” might yield a wealth of information shedding light on important connections between some of the County’s most prominent Black families of the nineteenth century. Read on to learn how that proved to be the case.

As with most other Black Centre Countians born prior to the 1850s that I have researched, Mary’s origins are not solidly documented. Her daughter Amelia reported to an undertaker after Mary’s death in Altoona, Blair County, on February 29, 1932, that Mary had been born on February 24, 1846, in or near Stormstown, to Thomas Miller and Rosanna Rice. Stormstown is a short walk from Tow Hill, the forested 240-foot-high iron-ore-studded promontory in the southwestern lobe of the Scotia Barrens, of which iron industry historian William Renwick White wrote in the early twentieth century: “For many years, in the region now called Tow Hill, there lived a colony of colored people. Aaron Delidge [sic] and Benjamin Miller with their families lived in huts in a cleared field above where [iron] ore has since been taken out” (from Early Iron Production in Central Pennsylvania, an unpublished manuscript written circa 1924).

 

I’ve learned next-to-nothing about the origin and significance of the “Tow Hill” name. A Tyrone-based historian writing in the 1950s under the pen name “Tow Hill Bill” guessed that it derived from the practice of moving ore cars uphill and down on rails by means of a mule-powered cable system. I have seen no evidence, however, that such a system was in place in Halfmoon Valley’s barrens as early as the 1830s. More compelling is the notion that Centre County’s Tow Hill was regarded as a smaller version of the much more famous Tow Hill settlement on the outskirts of Columbia, Pennsylvania. The latter had been established in 1819 by 56 manumitted slaves on land provided for that purpose  by a Quaker Wright family. A historical marker erected in that area in 2023 has a section titled “Why the Name Tow Hill?” with the following acknowledgement: “It is unknown why the community was named Tow Hill. It may be because 1) The area where Tow Hill is located was adjacent to hemp fields, or 2) When the manumitted slaves arrived in Columbia they may have been wearing “tow cloth” which is a coarse and heavy linen.” Tow is the fiber of hemp, flax, or jute prepared for spinning by beating.

The assertion on Mary Miller Green Delige’s death certificate that her mother’s maiden name was “Rosanna Rice” is strongly contradicted by information provided by Mary herself when she served as informant for the death certificates of two of her siblings. In both cases—for brother John H.B. Miller in 1913, and for sister Katie Miller Green in 1920—Mary identified the siblings’ mother not as Rosanna Rice but as “Rose Delige.” When their brother Frank died in Williamsport in 1916, an acquaintance told the coroner that Frank’s mother was “Rose Anna Delidge.” That all leads me to conclude that the mother of Mary Miller Green Delige and her siblings was a Rosanna born into the large Delige clan of Halfmoon Valley in the early decades of the nineteenth century.

There is little doubt that the father of Mary Miller Green Delige and her siblings was a man named Thomas Miller, born around 1815 in Virginia, presumably enslaved. That paternity was repeatedly noted on death certificates for Mary and her siblings. Thomas Miller was identified by name on Centre County census schedules for the first time in October 1850, when he was recorded as a 31-year-old day laborer living in a Stormstown-area residence with 41-year-old day laborer Benjamin Miller, 58-year-old Lucy Miller, and 18-year-old Anna M. Prince. (A nineteenth-century day laborer typically performed manual and/or unskilled labor on a temporary or casual basis, being paid by the day, tasks accomplished, or products completed.) All members of the Miller-Prince household were recorded as Black, and each claimed to have been born in Virginia. I strongly suspect that this Benjamin Miller was the man whom William Renwick White identified along with Aaron Delige as “living with their families in huts in a cleared field” on Tow Hill. Indeed, 22-year-old Aaron Delige was enumerated in the October 1850 census in the household immediately prior to the Miller-Prince household. Moreover, a few months earlier Aaron had fathered a daughter—Christina—with his teenage next-door-neighbor Anna Maria Prince (as reflected on Anna Maria’s and Christina’s death certificates).

Data recorded elsewhere leads me to believe that the Millers living together in that Tow Hill residence in October 1850 were Thomas (31-year-old husband of Rosanna Delige, and father of Mary Miller Green Delige), Benjamin (41-year-old brother of Thomas; married to Catherine Delige, possibly an elder sister of Rosanna), and the brothers’ 58-year-old mother Lucy, a.k.a. Lucinda, likely widowed (more on her later). So where was Thomas’ wife Rosanna at this time? And what about their children, including Mary, the focus of my research? I also had questions about Lucy and Benjamin Miller. In looking into the latter, I discovered death certificates and obituaries indicating that by October 1850 Benjamin had married a Catherine Delige, and she had delivered at least seven children (Kate, Wesley, Thomas, Caroline, James, Lucy, and Albert). There was a lot there to sort out.

The basis for the birth date cited on Mary Miller Green Delige’s death certificate (February 24, 1846) is unknown. The date’s specificity—which comports with Mary’s reputed age at death of 86 years, 0 months, and 5 days—lends it an aura of credibility. But I have seen many instances where very specific birth dates cited on death certificates prove to be dubious or even impossible in light of other recorded data. In Mary’s case, census data recorded for the Miller family in July 1860 cast doubt on the 1846 birth year cited on Mary’s death certificate. Those data reflect the following:

• Mary’s parents Thomas and Rosanna (Delige) Miller produced their first child, William, in or around 1845, presumably in Halfmoon Township.
• The couple’s second child, Jackson, was born there a year or two later.
• Third child Mary was born near Stormstown in 1849 (extrapolating in part from her declared age of 10 in July 1860).
• Fourth child Franklin was born in March 1850.

Census data recorded closer to Mary’s projected 1849 birth year are, unfortunately, not available. Most members of Thomas and Rosanna’s Miller’s family—including Mary—appear to have been omitted from the October 1850 federal census enumeration of Centre County. There are no entries for a Rosanna Miller, a Jackson Miller, a Mary Miller, or a Franklin Miller among enumerated Centre Countians. As noted above, only father Thomas was enumerated, apparently living with his mother Lucy and elder brother Benjamin on Tow Hill.

Mary’s brother William might have been included in the October 1850 census enumeration as part of a remarkable bevy of 13 African-American Miller and Delige children aged 1 to 14 recorded on a Stormstown-area farmstead belonging to Quakers Isaac and Catherine Way (on the 1874 map of Halfmoon Township presented below, a pair of farmhouses on either side of Tow Hill Road a half-mile north of Tow Hill are attributed to “I[saac] Way”). I have not learned why and in what manner this collection of Black children were accommodated on the Way farm. One of the listed children was a four-year-old William Miller—the same name and approximate age as Mary Miller Green Delige’s eldest brother. But neither Mary nor her brothers Jackson and Franklin were among the nine Miller children recorded on the Way farm in October 1850. It is possible that Mary—so young she may have been learning to walk—was living elsewhere at that time with her mother Rosanna and brothers Jackson and Franklin (the latter would have been only a few months old when the 1850 census was conducted).

It is also possible that some of Benjamin and Catherine Delige Miller’s children (presumed first cousins of Mary Miller Green Delige) were counted among the 13 Black children living on the Way farmstead in the fall of 1850. The Kate, James, and Lucy Miller recorded in that group were the same approximate ages as Benjamin and Catherine Miller’s similarly-named children. Moreover, Catherine Delige Miller (Benjamin’s 38-year-old wife) was recorded in the household visited by the enumerator immediately after visiting the Ways. She shared a dwelling with 36-year-old Foster Delige and 20-year-old A. Hartsock Delige. The next household enumerated comprised Eli Delige (age 26), Dorsey Delige (24), Aaron Delige (22), Moses Delige (20), and Benjamin Delige (15).  The stated ages of the eleven adult Deliges enumerated in neighboring households on Tow Hill strongly suggest that they were siblings, born in the following order:

• John, c. 1812
• Andrew, c. 1814
• Catherine, c. 1816
• Foster, c. 1818
• Hartsock, c. 1820
• Eli, c. 1823
• Rosanna, c. 1825
• Dorsey, c. 1826
• Aaron, c. 1828
• Moses, c. 1830
• Benjamin, c. 1835

According to Connie Cole’s The Black, Mulatto, and Allied Families of Centre County, a free Black man named Clemson Delige had been enumerated in adjoining Ferguson Township in the 1820 Federal census, heading a household that comprised himself (age 26-45), a female over the age of 45, three boys under the age of 14, and two females aged 14-26. Cole found Clemson referred to as “Clem Delige” in an 1823 assessment of Ferguson Township wherein he was recorded as the father of three school-age children:

• John, age 10 years (born about 1812-1813)
• Andrew, age 8 years (born about 1814-1815)
• Catherine, age 7 years (born about 1816)

Clem Delige was assessed two years later (1825) in Halfmoon Township as the father of school-age children Catherine (age 9) and Foster (7). The Delige family was still in Halfmoon Township in 1830 when the next federal census was completed.

That fits nicely with information set forth in an application submitted to the Pennsylvania Land Office on September 6, 1853, by Foster S. Delige, for an 18-acre triangle of land on Tow Hill. The application included an affidavit by Justice of the Peace Jacob Pottsgrove asserting that “to the best of [Foster’s] knowledge, no warrant or other official right has heretofore been issued for the land described in the above application, either in his own name or in the name of any other person or persons, under whom he claims the same, and that the first improvements ever made in the spring or summer of the year 1826 by his father, since deceased.” (A person could establish a claim on a tract of unclaimed land in Pennsylvania by “squatting” on it, “improving” it through clearing, cultivating, and/or constructing a dwelling on it, and occupying the tract for three or more consecutive years). As noted in the 1825 Halfmoon Township assessment, Foster’s father was Clem Delige, whom that assessment and the 1823 Ferguson Township assessment (along with the 1820 and 1830 census enumerations) tracked moving his family from Ferguson Township to Halfmoon Township around 1824.

When the “18-acre” tract on Tow Hill was surveyed for Foster Delige on November 1, 1853, it was found to contain only 15.97 acres. The “first improvements” made on that land by Foster’s father Clemson midway through 1826 may have included one or more of the “log huts” William White alluded to in his circa-1924 history of the Scotia Barrens. White further reported that the Tow Hill families “planted some apple trees [the basis for the “Fruit Hill” appellation on the 1864 map?] and started a graveyard which may be found a short distance above the foundation of the burned down building which was formally a company store and post office. The white people in the neighborhood called the negroes ‘Tow Heads,’ and when [iron ore] mining operations started [there in the early 1880s, the mines] were called ‘Tow Hill Ore Mines.’ The negroes lived in log houses of their own building. They worked sometimes for farmers, picked berries, hunted game, and sometimes they took out some ore by primitive methods, drying it on the ground and running it over a bump screen. They sold the ore at Pennsylvania Furnace [approximately 4½ miles south of Tow Hill]. In winter they frequently cut wood. They moved from there about the time ore operations were started on a large scale. The Delidge [sic] family went to Scotia” (more specifically, West Scotia/Marysville).

 

The unusual “Hartsock” name that Clemson Delige gave to his son born around 1820 reminded me of the following account I had read in Linn’s 1883 History of Centre and Clinton Counties, Pennsylvania.

Henry G[ray] Hartsock, [of western] Patton [Township], died in 1879. He and Rush Petrikin are said to have been the first two Abolitionists in Centre County. Mr. Hartsock was a fearless and unflinching advocate of the principles that taught him slavery was wrong. Despite the popular prejudice against his theory, and despite, too, the social ostracism to which his course subjected him, he never flagged in his outspoken and active zeal on behalf of the American slave. He lies buried in the Stormstown Cemetery, and upon his tombstone stands the eulogy, “A friend to the American slave during American slavery.” Runaway slaves seeking a route to Canada ever found protection and aid at his home [just west of the present intersection of Grays Woods Boulevard and I-99], and as this fact was not slow of dissemination he was frequently called upon to exercise his humanely charitable impulses. In 1846 a party of runaway slaves, numbering ten, called at Hartsock’s one Sunday morning, and in a trice found not only a hearty welcome but a capital breakfast. Fearful that the neighbors might discover and seek to return the fugitives, Hartsock concealed them in the woods near his house until nightfall, and then conducted them to the house of a colored man by name of Samuel Henderson, whose place was recognized as one of the stations on the Underground Railroad. Henderson put them safely on their route to Canada,  and soon afterwards both he and Hartsock were rejoiced to learn that their wards had reached the happy land without further hindrance.

   A man and his wife escaping from Virginia slavery passed by way of Cross’ tavern [possibly Andrew Cross’ tavern in Boggs Township, Clearfield County] en route to Hartsock’s house. At the tavern, however, the slave-catchers came up with them and bore them away towards the South. Word of the affair coming to Hartsock’s ears, he shouldered his gun and set out to rescue the captives; but his chase proved hopeless, and he was at last compelled to abandon it. A party of Abolitionists rescued the unfortunates at Hollidaysburg, and returned them to Patton township, where they settled and lived for many years afterwards. When the American negro was freed by Presidential proclamation of emancipation [in January 1863], Mr. Hartsock rejoiced with an exceeding great joy to see the fulfillment of a dream that he had cherished for years. . . .”

As Henry Hartsock and his father Christian were the only Hartsock heads-of-households identified in the 1820 census of Centre County—conducted around the time Hartsock Delige was born and named—we are presented with the possibility that Clemson Delige named his newborn son in honor of Halfmoon Valley’s earliest known Underground Railroad agent. We might also wonder if Clemson and his wife—the presumptive maternal grandparents of Mary Miller Green Delige—were the “man and his wife escaping from Virginia slavery” whom slave-catchers nabbed and attempted to bear away to the South,” only to have “Abolitionists rescue the unfortunates at Hollidaysburg, and return them to Patton township [or further west in Halfmoon Valley?], where they settled and lived for many years afterwards.”

A recounting of Mary Miller Green Delige’s long life will resume in Part 2.